Israeli air raids on the Palestinian territory have killed five people after an Israeli farm worker died in a Palestinian rocket attack.

 

The first Israeli air raid on Friday killed two Hamas security men in the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, according to a police spokesman and ambulance workers.

A second Israeli air attack targeted a Hamas police base in the town of Khan Younis in the centre of the strip and killed two Palestinians, a source said, without specifying if the victim had been a Hamas members. Three others were wounded in the attack.

 

Men belonging to the armed wing of Hamas regularly fire rockets and mortars into Israel from Gaza and, while the homemade rocket attacks rarely cause death or injury, they overshadow life in the border towns.

 

The last time an Israeli civilian was killed by cross-border rocket fire was on February 27.

 

The attack was followed by days of Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip which left more than 120 Palestinians dead, many of them civilians.